Friday, October 6, 2017

October 6, 1906 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that W. A.
Gardner, the Vice-President of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, has announced
the company will build a new railroad station between Madison, Lake, Canal and
Clinton Streets.The paper says that the
new station “will take its place among the great transportation centers of the
world.”[Chicago Daily Tribune, October 6, 1906] With two-thirds of the
property for the new station already in hand and the remainder in negotiation,
it is anticipated that construction will begin in spring of 1907.The railroad has spent $2,000,000 on the
property, one of the oldest sections in the city with many structures dating
from just after the Chicago fire in 1871.Another $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 will still need to be spent on the remainder
of the property with between $12,000,000 and $15,000,000 needed to build the
great station itself.The plans, drawn
up the architectural office of Frost and Granger, will “bring to the patrons of
the railroad the conveniences and the facilities which they have been without
and always would be without on the present Wells Street site.” The station on Wells Street north of the river
was built in 1882 when the railroad had only four dozen or so trains arriving
in or leaving the city, carrying about 4,000 people a day.In 1906 the road carries 45,000 passengers a
day or 24,000,000 people a year.A
singular advantage of the new station will be its location on the west side of the
river, which means that trains will no longer be delayed by the raising of
bridges and passengers will be able to access the station from five different streets,
rather than having Wells Street and the bridge across the river as the only
path to the trains.

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October 6, 1977 – Four city groups – the Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council, Friends of the Parks, the Open Lands Project, and the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects – come together to propose a large park, featuring a 10,000-seat outdoor music venue, to be located in a new 20-acre lot east of Michigan Avenue between Randolph and Monroe Streets. Part of the park, it is anticipated, will be built over the Illinois Central commuter tracks with another section over the extension of Columbus Drive under construction at the time. The proposal for this “Lakefront Gardens for the Performing Arts” contradicts a proposal that the Chicago Park District has made for a new performance space in Butler Field to replace the existing Petrillo band shell. The photo above shows Grant Park in 1979 close to where Jaume Plenza's Crown Fountain stands today.